Verse for reflection: Hear my prayer, O Lord; let my cry for help come to you. Do not hide your face from me when I am in distress. Turn your ear to me; when I call, answer me quickly. Psalm 102:1-2
The runaround happens to all of us. We call a company and get tossed from department to department. We get so frustrated we resolve never to call them again.
But one day when it happened to me again, I just laughed. When the fifth person to handle my call asked whom I was trying to reach, it had become so ridiculous I just chuckled and thought about going for a record. I repeated my request. In an instant I was talking to the man I wanted.
Several of the people who handle the calls in our own organization discussed this one day at break. “I hate to get calls on line X because I never know whom to give the call to!” said one.
That helped me understand why I sometimes receive the runaround elsewhere. The inner workings of a company are often so complex that giving the wrong call to the wrong person can result in confusion and even reprimand.
It is helpful if we can be as specific as possible in explaining what we want. For instance, call one division of the office I work for and say, “I want to know about your books.” The receptionist needs to know whether you want to place an order or whether you want information on the philosophy of the organization. That can make a difference in who should receive the call.
That may be the problem with prayer, too. Sometimes we feel like we’re getting the royal runaround from God. Why aren’t our prayers answered? Or why do we seem to feel we’ve received one answer, but a week later, the door closes.
Maybe it’s because we don’t really know what we’re praying for. We haven’t defined our request, and so we’re not ready for an answer. We think we want to talk to the ordering department—when really we should back up and discuss life philosophy with the Almighty. Prayer is more about being in communication with God than giving God our want lists. We’re inclined to give God the runaround. We tell God, “Thy will be done,” and in the next breath we whisper “but not that way.”
One book I’ve studied, The Workbook of Living Prayer (Maxie Dunnam) encourages us if we’re stuck and don’t know how to pray, simply follow directions, as in the Lord’s prayer. We pray it so often that sometimes we fail to appreciate what Jesus was teaching—a pattern, for anytime.
Action: Dunnam suggests praying Matthew 6:9-13 and paraphrasing it in new words, if needed, which have more meaning for you. Perhaps that can bring you a step closer to truly getting through to the Almighty. Or God getting through to you.
***
Adapted from Why Didn’t I Just Raise Radishes: Finding God in the Everyday, Herald Press, 1994, p. 135, and originally for my newspaper column, Another Way, where you can sign up to get a free weekly email subscription, or daily “Stress Tips.”
Verse for reflection: There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.1 Corinthians 12: 4-6 Today’s New International Version
Cleaning or janitorial work has to be one of the most under-appreciated jobs in an organization—or even at home. No one notices your work unless you don’t wipe down all the cobwebs.
I became aware of this when our church janitor was gone for several weeks. Persons from church were asked to volunteer. Somehow the lofty idea of “service” we hold in high esteem on Sunday morning takes on new meaning when you’re down on your hands and knees cleaning up someone’s drips in the toilet stall.
Being a janitor or cleaning woman is difficult not just because of distasteful tasks, but because it is such a low status job. Too many of us somehow look down on the janitor, which is strange, because “clean” is something most of us value.
By Daquella Manera, Flickr, Creative Commons License.
I cleaned houses one summer during college while living in the deep South. At one house, I felt like a maid. I had to clean the whole house including changing bed sheets twice a week, and do all the laundry. The woman, sort of like the wives and mothers in the book/movie “The Help,” would disappear all day to a full calendar of social events—clubs, bridge, teas, shopping—while I worked.
At the other house, I felt like the woman’s friend coming in to help out. On days when she had big jobs for me to do like washing windows or cupboards, she helped with the task to make the job go faster. She always asked about my family, and would fix coffee or soda for me, like a friend.
The jobs were much the same, but my feelings about them were different because each woman had a different way of relating to me.
I’d guess that many people who clean for a living take pleasure in their work. My mother enjoyed cleaning homes for many years a few days a week after we were grown. Your mind can do many things while you sweep, dust and scrub. You can leave your work at the end of the day and not “take it home.” There’s an immediate result to show for your work. But I’d also guess there isn’t a cleaning person alive who at some point has felt unappreciated or stigmatized.
The scripture from Corinthians reminds us that all parts of the body are important, just like the jobs we do in a church, home or organization are important. One time after hurting my palm, I realized how important even that small body part was to many tasks—such as slamming the trunk of a car. Our palms are like feet in that they do most of their work without our ever noticing how important they are.
During this season when we try to live more purposefully, take time to notice and thank those who empty the wastebaskets at the office, clean the coffee mugs, mop the floors at church. If you are one who does these tasks, allow yourself to feel pride and joy in a job well done.
And go to the deeper level with today’s scripture by reflecting on roles in the church. Is cleaning, painting, mowing or taking care of the nursery really just as important as preaching and teaching in your church’s hierarchy? What about denominational moderator, stated clerk, executive director, pope?
Action: Take time to write a note, email or verbally thank someone who does a job that is under-appreciated.
***
For a review of The Help, check Third Way Cafe’s Media Matters review.
Verse for reflection: By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating … Genesis 2:2-3
A number of years ago, my husband and I were trying to accomplish a half dozen things at once. A storm had knocked down several large limbs off our maple trees. I needed to run a new book manuscript off my computer printer. And I was washing a load of clothes.
I set up the computer to print, got the clothes started, then went out to prop up limbs so Stuart could saw them for firewood, which the children helped to stack.
“Do you realize that 100 years ago our grandparents would have considered this science fiction?” I mused during a lull from the work. “They would have had a scrub board to do the wash, an ax or crosscut saw for the wood, and paper and pencil to write a book. They could never have had all three chores happening simultaneously.”
“So how come we still feel like we never get anything accomplished?” Stuart contemplated.
Even with our “labor saving” devices, we have more chores maybe because we have so much: many more clothes than those who live in places where laundry is still done by hand, for instance.
But most of us like, want, and need to be involved in meaningful, productive activity. Even kids seem happier when they have appropriate, kid-sized chores. When the kids were small they would complain, sure, about Saturday morning cleanup, but if I broke down their chores into a list they could check off as they finished, they seemed to prefer something to do over being bored. I recall the happy sound of hearing one daughter humming as she worked.
Meaningful work and busyness are enjoyed the most when we also experience the opposite: meaningful breaks and periods of rest. Perhaps the real message of Gen. 2:2 (above) and the Bible’s teaching about “sabbatical” (giving the ground a rest every seven years), is that rest follows work. God took joy in the work of creation, and enjoyed a period of rest.
Action: Many of us have a long list of chores we want to accomplish on the weekend, but make sure the work is followed by a period of purposeful rest.
Verse for reflection: I have seen all the things that are done under the sun, all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Ecclesiastes 1:14, (NIV)
How do you measure snow? I once heard the owner of a radio station in southern Arkansas at the National Federation of Press Women tell this story. They don’t get much snow at that end of Arkansas so when they got a big one back in 1987, everyone was calling the station asking, “How deep is the snow?” No one at the station knew how to measure it. Surely one needed a fancy instrument.
So the station called the U.S. Weather Bureau (obviously in the days before Google) and said, “We’ve got a crazy question down here: How do you measure snow?”
The reply was, “Well, we’ve got a crazy answer for you. Get yourself a yardstick, push it down in the snow, and when you hit bottom, read the yard stick.”
They had twelve inches, (which coincidentally, is how much I measured yesterday at my house when I stuck my yardstick in the snow).
We’re masters at making the simple complex, like the folks at the Arkansas radio station. For instance, I had always put the twelve disciples of the Bible on a pedestal for so quickly leaving all to follow Jesus. What charisma Christ must have had, I thought. What commitment the disciples showed! What an interesting cultural time when some followed a master around for a period of years instead of going to college, I read.
Then a guest minister at our church started her sermon one Sunday by saying, in reference to the calling of the disciples, “As a wife and mother, I don’t see what’s so wonderful about a bunch of men who go off on a fishing trip one morning and don’t come home for three years. If someone were to offer me a three-year sabbatical with no dishes or clothes to wash, no responsibilities of any kind, to go off and wander around the country with a wonderful teacher, listening to stories and learning great truths, you wouldn’t have to ask me twice!”
So the disciple’s commitment may not have been so lofty and complicated as I was making it.
“Simplify, simplify,” said Henry David Thoreau. “Our life is frittered away by detail.”
The deeper question here is how do we measure happiness. I enjoyed many pictures on Facebook yesterday of kids and parents enjoying their romps in the snow around here. We have not much had this much snow for about two years. Such simple pleasures, especially since many work places were also closed.
We all need a good snow day now and then to remind us of some of life’s simple pleasures of fresh air, a warm house (if you were lucky and didn’t lose power, or have a good wood stove), tasty food, the love of family and friends.
Action: How is God asking you to simplify your (my?) life?
***
Stories come from Why Didn’t I Just Raise Radishes: Finding God in the Everyday, Herald Press, 1994. Originally printed in Another Way Newspaper Column, syndicated and found online at www.ThirdWay.com/aw.
Since most of the east coast of the U.S. (from Virginia on up) is happily (?) enjoying a snow day today, I’m taking a break from my Lenten devotional series and have been trying to catch up a bit on reviewing manuscripts for the magazine I edit, Living for the Whole Family.
Our spring 2013 issue.
I’m also a writer who has also submitted many many articles and book proposals to a variety of publishers and publications, and that’s what makes my job as editor so hard.
I know the sting of rejection. The desire to lash out, “stupid editor, she/he doesn’t know anything. People would love this topic! They would buy thousands of books! They would beat a path …” Or not. (Hence why you have so many publishing their own blogs today. Me included.)
(What you hope you never get)
So I HATE to send rejections (and that’s why it takes me so long to respond sometimes). But I have had many writers tell me, “yours is the nicest rejection I have ever received.” Some writers are grateful for any comment, any direction, any feedback that will help them (us) in our quest to connect and be published!
Thus I weigh the options for the feedback I give to writers:
- Shall I be brutally honest or spare feelings?
- How do I tell an elderly writer that the writing feels like it was written in the 1960s or 1970s? How do I feel about maybe becoming an elderly writer myself someday (not now, heavens!) and feeling rejected because of “ageism”?
- How do I balance the need for articles with a different twist or slant, with the “way out there” pieces that no one will identify with because no one else has had or will have this experience?
- The profound experiences of everyday life – birth, marriage, death – are just that, profound experiences that all of us experience (except for marriage) and therefore, most editors receive way way too many articles on the topic (especially grieving and loss or death).
- Would writers rather hear “we are overstocked” which is usually true, even though I make exceptions for pieces that totally rock and sing? Or would they (you) rather hear “this humor just isn’t funny” or “you are talking down to your readers.”
Hating to send rejections is almost overcome by the joy of opening an email or letter to find an article that jumps from the computer screen or page and makes me laugh, cry or think deeply.
The amazing thing to me is that writers go through all this trouble and travail to be paid a mere $35 to $50 most of the time and be JUMPING UP AND DOWN FOR JOY when they get the check and a copy of the publication with their name in print.
Writers are not really vain, we just live for the byline.
But at least I rarely get pieces anymore (which used to be fairly common at some publications) from writers saying “God inspired me to write this piece” and inferring you better use it or your publication is not so inspired. L Editors have probably complained about that old standby for so long they have pretty much killed the line, even if writers still feel it.
My old standby advice for getting published anywhere is to spend a lot of time reading the publication or website or blog where you’d like to be published, so that you absorb not only what it is about, but the language (formal, informal, loose, trendy) the publication uses, how they approach readers, the editorials (what the editor writes about gives you clues as to their likes and dislikes). And for pity sake, do read (memorize!) whatever guidelines the editor or magazine shares. Ours are here.
If you are a writer, what kind of feedback do you prefer from an editor? Feel free to respond to any of the above bullet items if you comment. You will be a help. Thanks!
Verse for reflection: Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say this—those he redeemed from the hand of the foe, those he gathered from the lands, from east and west, from north and south. (Psalm 107: 1-3, NIV)
The inside of New York City Police Department’s impound lot, where they send vehicles towed off the streets of Manhattan, is a place you don’t to be. Everyone is mad or at least unhappy—even the workers. Who would want to work there?
This one appeared as shady as one in a TV show or movie. What “evidence” from someone’s crime is hidden there? Which of these cars have been stolen? Abandoned with a dead body inside?
Jim Bowman taping residents and family members discussing care in an urban New York City retirement community, Village Care of New York. Photo by Wayne Gehman.
We were in New York City taping interviews for a documentary, Embracing Aging: Families Living With Change; at 4 p.m., we needed to move the car but I was running just a few minutes late at the end of an interview. I volunteered to go move the car while the guys tore down the equipment. I reached the street at 4:07 p.m. and it had already vanished. No sign left behind. Not even a number to call on the parking sign. What do you do?
I go back to the building and asked the concierge. She said to call 311, a non-emergency phone tree that I could quickly tell was going to take me hours to wade through. The concierge also knew the address of the impound lot off the top of her head and said it was not far away. I thought I might as well grab a taxi. With only one impound lot in the whole of Manhattan, this was my first stroke of luck all day.
The taxi dumped me out near a pier along the Hudson River and pointed me to the tin/metal warehouse that functioned as the impound lot. I could easily imagine a shoot-out or clandestine interrogation/intimidation of a “witness” happening there. I followed a bunch of signs and finally found a room with a sullen clerk silently directing me with a jerk of her head to a window marked “Information. Start here.”
Seated behind bulletproof plastic, a clerk in heavily accented English tried to tell me three times what I needed to do. Finally I told her I’m hard of hearing (which I am) and she said it again. I had to surrender my driver’s license and leave it with her while I walked to another building, marked NYPD. I felt almost like I was being arrested. There I had to wait for a van to drive me to our company van on the impound lot where I retrieved the car’s registration card, to take back to the clerk.
Meanwhile, one of the other detainees is pounding his fist into the wall of the office and yelling “It’s a scam” because the clerk had denied him the right to use his credit card to pay the hefty $185 towing fee, because his name didn’t exactly match the name on the registration card. “And I suppose there’s no ATM near here?” he shot back. “What am I supposed to do?” A mother who had her car towed had just gotten her adult daughter out of the hospital and was in tears from frustration and stress.
When the clerk finally stamped “Redeemed” on the top of what had quickly grown to be a pile of paperwork about my case, I was struck by the theological nature of not only the stamped word, but the whole experience. I was no longer a crook, who had stolen seven minutes of street time from the parking meter. I was free to drive out of the impound lot; it was not only me that was saved, but the Mennonite Media vehicle: we hadn’t abandoned her; we “bought” her salvation. She was “made good” (which is what redeemed really means) and we were free to head home.
Action: Thank God for the gift of redemption. Perhaps you can respond with a gesture of thankfulness and give someone else a “free” pass today—someone who has wronged, slighted, or looked over you, and share the good feeling of being left off the hook.
***
Here’s a video clip of the documentary we were producing that day. The actual ticket reads that the car was picked up at 4:01 p.m, one minute after time was up. Be warned.
Portions first used for my Another Way newspaper column for MennoMedia.
Verse for reflection: I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. Ephesians 1:16-17.
My five-year-old was heartbroken. We couldn’t find the library book she had brought home from school and she wouldn’t be allowed to bring another one home until she had returned that one. Sensible rule.
We hunted in all the logical places, then the illogical ones. My usual line about “I’m sure it will turn up,” just didn’t comfort her. On library day at school, she was always left out.
After three weeks of not getting anywhere, I called the school librarian and explained the situation. “I’ll be glad to pay for the book,” I offered, “so Tanya can start bringing books home again.”
The librarian with the sensible rule also turned out to have a sensible head. “Well, books turn up so frequently soon after parents have paid for a book, and I have to go through all the book work,” she said, with the wisdom of ages. “I’ll tell you what; since you called, I’ll go ahead and let Tanya bring books home again. I know you’ll be responsible. If you still haven’t found it by the end of the year, then I’ll let you pay.”
I could have kissed her. Tanya’s eyes as she got off the bus that day were my reward. “Mrs. Fisher let me have a book today!” she sang out.
When I saw Mrs. Fisher several weeks later at school, I told her we still hadn’t found it. “You know,” she said without a hint of condescension, “books so often turn up caught behind a bureau or desk right at the top of the baseboard. They don’t slide down so you can see them from the floor, and it’s hard to see behind the furniture.”
I was sure I had looked in all those places but I went home and checked behind older sister’s platform bed. Sure enough, as though Mrs. Fisher had snooped through our house, there it was. That day Tanya’s eyes really did shine when I showed her the lost book.
Mrs. Fisher, to us, had the smarts of a King Solomon, the experience of long years dealing with children, parents, and books, and when to offer grace.
Action: Do I seek God’s wisdom and revelation, as Paul reminds us in Ephesians? What gems are waiting for our discovery? One of the things that fascinates me about reading scripture is that no matter how often I’ve read a passage, it can speak fresh to me each time. Even though God’s word doesn’t change, we change, and look at things differently, and God’s spirit can speak to us with a new word for each day and situation, if we are persistent. We can also rejoice that God always extends grace, even when we’ve messed up.
***
Our children were fortunate to attend a wonderful local elementary school with fantastic teachers and staff, including Mrs. Fisher. This story first appeared in my book, Why Didn’t I Just Raise Radishes? Herald Press, 1994).
Saturday was baking day in many households (along with cleaning day) when I was growing up. The mood to bake something still often strikes me on Saturday.
I actually made this cake earlier this week to celebrate a couple of birthdays at work, and as usual, the cake, especially the frosting, won rave reviews. (Of course, you can take cookies given to you at a Christmas cookie exchange that no one at your house cared much for and shuffle them off at work and they still get eaten, right?)
This recipe is one of my favorite from what I now like to refer to as a cookbook, Whatever Happened to Dinner? Recipes and Reflections on Keeping Family Mealtime (Herald Press, 2010). There are almost 100 recipes in that book and I’m still grateful to the women who helped organize and test the recipes for that project. If you are in the mood for something sweet—this is like eating dark chocolate with candy on top. If you’ve given up all sweets for Lent, bookmark this for later!
It contains simple ingredients–I’m guessing you already have all these ingredients in your pantry, and the cake doesn’t even take eggs!
Sheri’s Chocolate Cake
This recipe came from a friend originally and quickly became the family favorite whenever we wanted chocolate cake. Quick and easy to make. Putting it in a large sheet pan instead of a regular-size cake pan makes it a great dessert for a church potluck. – Sheri Hartzler
Sift together:
3 cups / 750 ml flour
2 cups / 500 ml sugar
1/3 cup / 75 ml cocoa
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
Add to dry ingredients (don’t overmix):
2 cups / 500 ml water
2/3 cup / 150 ml melted shortening or butter
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Bake at 350° F/ 180° C in two 9-inch round pans or one 12-inch by 17-inch sheet cake pan for 25–30 minutes.
Easy Penuche Icing
My aunt brought a chocolate cake with this icing to a family reunion. My husband Wayne was thrilled, made a huge fuss over it, and asked for the recipe. We received it in the mail a short time later. The whole family now knows that if there is chocolate cake, Wayne is going to ask for penuche icing. It really is good—and it is just fun to say penuche! – Carmen Wyse
½ cup / 125 ml butter
1 cup / 250 ml brown sugar
¼ cup / 50 ml milk
1¾ cup / 425 ml powdered sugar
Melt butter, add brown sugar, and boil 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add milk and bring back to a boil. Remove from heat and cool to lukewarm. Add powdered sugar a little at a time, beating until it is nice and creamy. Spread on cake. Add chopped pecans or slivered almonds for a final touch if you want.
Making the frosting
Melting butter in sauce pan on stove, add brown sugar.
Boiling 2 minutes, stirring constantly.
After the mixture has cooled to lukewarm, then you add your powdered sugar.
The cake is rich, moist and good all by itself, or with chocolate frosting or a white frosting–for which there are also recipes in the book. This time I added slivered almonds which makes the whole thing like a candy bar. I know, sinful, especially during Lent. But tomorrow is feast day!
Verse for reflection: But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. Matthew 6:17-18 (NIV)
Facing a long weekend of getting ready for a certain medical procedure wherein your insides are fastidiously clean (if you get my drift and you’re of a certain age), is no fun.
But doing so during Lent: what’s not to love? You do the every-ten-year thing, win points with God, and lose weight all in one l-o-n-g weekend.
Right. That’s not what Jesus told his disciples to do nor does it qualify for true sacrificing in anybody’s religion whether you call it Ramadan or Lent. In a church school class for Lent, we’re studying the classic Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life (Marjorie Thompson) regarding spiritual disciplines, and last Sunday looked at the topic of fasting.
I was reminded of the one time I engaged in spiritual fasting for five days. I was in Mennonite Voluntary Service (VS) and was earnestly trying to figure out what I should do next. I lived with five other people in our “unit” house. To escape notice of my fellow VSers, I fasted only over lunch. I could easily arrange to be absent or otherwise engaged over lunch and no one would notice, so I ate breakfast and dinner with the others, but skipped lunch and all snacks in between.
(Goofing off in the kitchen of our unit apartment, about to snitch a bedtime snack. Circa 1970.)
That probably doesn’t sound like true suffering (it wasn’t) but I got hungry enough that my stomach would remind me frequently through the day that I was fasting. And I used those hunger pangs to pray specifically for direction from God as to what I should do when I got out of VS. Perhaps it wasn’t much of a fast, but it was genuine.
The most likely direction was college, but I truly wasn’t sure where I should go, what I should study, or how I would pay for it. This was 1971, before admission deadlines were as stringent as they are today. While I fasted and prayed that week in early spring, I received two strong nudges: a letter from a friend of mine who had enrolled at Eastern Mennonite College (now University) and encouraged me to go there; then a couple days later the financial aid officer from the school called and said I would probably qualify for some pretty strong financial aid. My friend had put him up to it. It looked like pretty clear guidance to me, and I really never looked back. So I went to EMU, had four wonderful years (including one year studying abroad), found good direction for my life’s work, and ended up meeting the man with whom I would share my journey (but that’s a story for another time).
The neatest thing was feeling a very strong connection with God as I prayed, searched, meditated, and tried not to yield to the constant temptation of one of my favorite things: food.
Action. Whatever you’re giving up, or taking on for Lent, keep at it. Sunday—feast day if that’s the way you practice Lent—is coming when you can take a “break” from your discipline for one day. As we recall the sacrifice of Jesus, this is nothing. We don’t “earn” our salvation anyway; it is a pure gift of God. Amen.
Pic 1: Judi Brenneman, unit hostess, demonstrates a craft with the girls club we ran. Pic 2: Watching my nursery school students which I taught three days a week at Talcum Mennonite Church. Pic 3: Here’s proof I played college basketball my first two years: #33. Miriam Mummaw, our coach is beside me.
***
My first book, On Troublesome Creek (Herald Press, 1981) is about the year I spent in Voluntary Service near Hazard, Kentucky.
Verse for reflection: Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Psalm 119:97
Growing up, I always did my best thinking in the chicken coop (not to mention my worst sibling fight there).
It was a mighty fancy chicken coop in those days (before the trend to lucky free range chickens), and it was pretty mindless work to push your cart down a cement row between cages and gather up the eggs and place them in cardboard egg flats.
The chickens functioned as my therapists: cocking their heads this way and that as I talked earnestly to them about my problems. They looked like they were truly listening. I sometimes ranted, sometimes cried in frustration or joy, and sometimes warbled a song at the top of my lungs. It was a great place to unload.
But it is only in retrospect that I can talk so lovingly about my chicken house therapy. How we hated to gather eggs back then. How Mother must have dreaded the hour to shoo us out to the chicken house twice a day. We were paid a small amount which helped motivate us.
But besides teaching us the value of work and a dollar earned, I now realize how manual, repetitive work contributed to my having time and space to think things out. It was after one of these chicken house “therapy” sessions that I went in our house and found an index card and jotted down what I thought I wanted to be in life—truly not knowing or even imagining how this would ever be possible for me: to be a Christian writer. I was 15.
This is the real card I inscribed that day, saved in a top secret file I call “Weird to keep but interesting.”
Jesus was a carpenter by occupation and I’m thinking that Jesus must have ruminated on his calling and his life as he sanded wood or sawed in his carpenter shop. Did he know what lay ahead for him? I wonder if he ever sneaked back to the shop once he began teaching and preaching, in order to have contemplative time to himself.
Most of us can’t meditate on God’s word all day long as the Psalmist did, but if you do manual work, that can be an advantage. Many of us like working in the garden for that reason—or freezing or canning its produce. Shelling peas or snapping beans is some of the best “mindless” work there is—if you are so fortunate!
Action: Where do you do your best thinking? If you don’t do manual kind of work, take whatever opportunities you have in the day—commuting, walking, running, washing dishes, showering—to focus on a verse of scripture or big questions: your life and where it is headed; your relationships; on God’s provisions for you and how you can respond more faithfully to God’s call; on Jesus’ example and extreme sacrifice as we go through this season of Lent. May we seek clarity, cleansing, self-understanding, and joy.
Chicken photo from FreeFoto.com
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